Earth Day Art

For a cooperative Earth Day project, cut a large circle of butcher paper. Draw a general outline of continents on it. Put out green and blue paint on paper plates and give children wooden spools to use for painting. Encourage them to use green inside the continent areas (for land) and blue outside (for water). When complete, this will make a really neat representation of our planet Earth.

Earth Day Bracelet. Cut a two-inch wide strip of clear contact paper. Cut the length to make a bracelet. Attach sticky Velcro to the ends, so your bracelet can go on and off. The children wear their bracelets sticky side out. Go on a nature walk. They can put pieces of grass, flowers, weeds, feathers or anything they find on the nature walk. When you come in put the other piece of contact paper over your bracelet. Discuss with the children what they found on the nature walk. You can do this a simpler way by just putting masking tape sticky side out, on the children’s wrists. The clear contact looks so much better.

After lunch, collect all items that were thrown away. Such as plastic bags, wrappers, juice boxes or bottles, yogurt and pudding containers, plastic ware, paper napkins, any one-use and disposable items. Rinse out any dirt items. With these items make a group collage or bulletin board. At top of collage using newspaper, cut out letters for the heading ” Let’s make our lunches trash less” Talk to the children as you are making the collage about all the items that were thrown away. Talk about how everyone can change how the lunches are packed. Listen and record what the children say. Adult suggests could be, use washable containers for drinks , sandwiches and other items in lunch. Use cloth napkins and silverware… The children came up with some great ideas and the parents get to see how much garbage thrown away in one day.

Stuff a white paper lunch sack with newspaper, insert a paper towel tube into the open end of the sack and put a rubber band around it to hold it together. This makes the puppets head and handle. Decorate by adding cut strips of newspaper hair, aluminum foil balls for eyes, red foam smiles cut from meat trays, and anything else you think would add to the project. We call our puppets Recycling Rita or Rick.

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